Art from the Ashes

A Holocaust Anthology

Lawrence L. Langer

Art from the Ashes

A Holocaust Anthology

Lawrence L. Langer

Description

Art from the Ashes provides the most far-reaching collection of art, drama, poetry, and prose about the Holocaust ever presented in a single volume. Through the works of men and women, Jews and non-Jews, this anthology offers a vision of the human reality of the catastrophe. Essays by familiar writers like Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel accompany lesser-known efforts by Yankiel Wiernik and Frantisek Kraus; stories by Tadeusz Borowski and Ida Fink join fiction by neglected authors such as Isaiah Spiegel and Adolf Rudnicki; and extensive selections have been chosen from the works of six poets--the renowned Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs, and Abraham Sutzkever among them. Each selection (except for self-contained excerpts from ghetto journals and diaries) appears here in its
complete form. Langer also includes in their entirety a novel by Aharon Appelfeld, a novella by Pierre Gascar, and Joshua Sobol's controversial drama Ghetto. In addition, this volume features a visual essay in the form of reproductions of twenty works of art created in the Terezin concentration camp.

Art from the Ashes

A Holocaust Anthology

Lawrence L. Langer

Table of Contents

GENERAL INTRODUCTION: On Reading Holocaust Literature I THE WAY IT WAS 1. One Year in Treblinka from The Death Camp in Treblinka: A Documentary, Jankiel Weirnik,2. Extermination Camp from "The Good Old Days"; The Holocaust and Seen By Its Perpetrators and Bystanders, Kulmhof (Chelmno)3. "But Lidice is in Europe!" from Terezin, Frantisek R. Kraus,4. "Conversation with a Dead Man" from ir Haben Es Gesehen, Jacques Furmanski,5. "Voices" from Days and Memory, Charlotte Delbo,6. "One Day in Jozefow: Initiation to Mass Murder" from Lessons and Legacies: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World, Christopher R. Browning,7. "Shame" from The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi,8. "Torture" from At the Mind's Limits, JeanAmery,9. "A Plea for the Dead" from Legends of Our Time, Elie Wiesel,II JOURNALS AND DIARIES (Introduction) 1. "Diary of the Great Deportation" from A Cup of Tears; A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto Langer (Holocaust Anthology), Abraham Lewin,2. "Days of Nightmare" from Lucy S.Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, Joseph Zelkowicz,3. "Memoir" from Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary, Avraham Tory,III FICTION (Introduction) 1. "The Key Game," "A Spring Morning" from A Scrap of Time and Other Stories, Ida Fink3. "Bread" From Midstream, Isaiah Spiegel,4. "The Last Morning" from Anton the Dove Fancier and Other Tales of the Holocaust, Bernard Gotfryd5. Tzili, Aharon Appelfeld6. "This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen"
from This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski7. "Infinity" from Street of Lost Brothers, Arnost Lustig8. "The Crystal Stream" from Ascent to Heaven, Adolf Rudnicki9. "Lieutenant Boulanger" from Attendance List for a Funeral, Alexander Kluge8. "Resurrection" from Soul of Wood, Jakov Lind9. "Season of the Dead" from Beasts and Men and The Seed, Pierre GascarIV DRAMA (Introduction) Ghetto, Joshua SobolV POETRY (Introduction) 1. "War," "Faces in Swamps,"(I-V) "My every breath is a curse." "How?" "Grains of Wheat," "Stalks," "Frozen Jews," "Resurrection," "Black Thorns" from A. Sutzkever: Selected Poetry and Prose "In a Cell," "For My Child," "Burnt Pearls," "Poem About A Herring," "Self-Portrait" from Burnt Pearls:Ghetto Poems of Abraham Sutzkever, Abraham Sutzkever2. "Autobiography," "Europe, Late," "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car," "The Roll Call," "Testimony," "Instruction for Crossing the Border,"Draft of a Reparations Agreement," "Footprints," "Ready for Parting" from Points of Departure, Dan Pagis3. "Death Fugue," "Aspen Tree," "With a Variable Key," "Nocturnally Pouting," "Tenebrae," "There Was Earth Inside Them," "Psalm," "Alchemical," "Radix, Matrix," "Tabernacle Window," " ...And No Kind Of" from Paul Celan: Poems "From Things Lost," "Sound-Dead Sister-Shell," "In the Corner of Time," "From the Beam" from Last Poems, Paul Celan4. "War Diary," "Il Faut Laisser...," "Guard and Protect Me," "In A Troubled Hour," "Like Death," "Floral Song," "The Fifth Eclogue
(fragment)," "O Ancient Prisons," "Dreamscape," "Fragment," "Root," "A la Recherche...," "Forced March," "Razglednicas" from Zsuzsanna Ozsvath and Fredrick Turner, eds., Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklos Radnoti, Miklos Radnoti5. "O the night of the weeping children!" "Even the old men's last breath," "What secret cravings of the blood," "You onlookers," "If I only new," "Chorus of the Rescued," "Chorus of the Unborn," "Night, night," "If the prophets broke in," "O the homeless colors of the evening sky!" "In the evening your vision widens," "Peoples of the earth," "Landscape of screams" from O The Chimneys and The Seeker and Other Poems, Nelly Sachs6. "Good night, World," "God is a Sad Maharal," "I Have Never Been Here Before," "Smoke," "Cloud-Jew" from Richard J. Fein,
ed., Selected Poems of Yankev Glatshteyn, Jacob GladsteinVI PAINTERS OF TEREZIN 1. "The Affair of the Painters of Terezin" from Terezin, Leo Haas2 20 halftones (black and white).

Art from the Ashes

A Holocaust Anthology

Lawrence L. Langer

Reviews and Awards

"...[a] remarkable volume, perfectly suited for anyone studying the Holocaust....Compared with these firsthand accounts, fiction could be, one would think, only a pallid version of reality. Yet the fiction Mr. Langer collects...highlights the reality of the Holocaust with stunning intensity....[W]e are driven, privileged, to listen."--Front page of The New York Times Book Review